Law Commons^™

Embracing Paradox: Three Problems The Nlrb Must Confront To Resist Further Erosion Of Labor Rights In The Expanding Immigrant Workplace, Michael C. Duff

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This article discusses the Supreme Court's 2002 Hoffman Plastic Compounds opinion, normally considered in terms of its social justice ramifications, from the different perspective of NLRB attorneys tasked with pursuing enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) under the conceptually (and practically) odd rubric that some NLRA employees (unauthorized workers) have no remedy under the NLRA. The article focuses on three problems evincing paradox. First, NLRB attorneys prosecuting cases involving these workers will probably gain knowledge of unlawful background immigration conduct. To what extent must the attorneys disclose it, and to whom? Second, NLRB attorneys are extraordinarily reliant on …

Governing In The Vernacular: Eugen Ehrlich And Late Habsburg Ethnography, Monica E. Eppinger

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Eugen Ehrlich's vision for a "dynamic conception of law" in 1903 challenges prior focus on doctrine and logic with a demand that legal science direct attention to the "facts of daily life." Ehrlich's program -- his innovative conception of law and calls for a new sociology of law -- has been claimed as inspiration by those intent on modernizing law and state administration and by critics launching attacks on state fetishism. Between these extremes, Ehrlich's understudied ideas about implementing "living law" as a program for governance deserve re-examination.

This Article, situating Ehrlich's work in the social, intellectual, and political milieu …

From Ballots To Bullets: District Of Columbia V. Heller And The New Civil Rights, Anders Walker

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This article posits that the Supreme Court's recent Second Amendment ruling District of Columbia v. Heller is a victory for civil rights, but not in the sense that most activists from the 1960s would recognize. Rather than a product of mid-century legal liberalism, Heller marks the culmination of almost forty years of coalition-based popular constitutionalism aimed at transforming the individual right to bear arms and the common law right to "employ deadly force in self-defense" into new civil rights. The implications of this are potentially great. By declaring the right to use deadly force in self-defense an "essential" right, the …

Working Sick: Lessons Of Chronic Illness For Health Care Reform, Elizabeth Pendo

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Although chronic illness is generally associated with the elderly or disabled, chronic conditions are widespread among working-age adults and pose significant challenges for employer-based health care plans. Indeed, a recent study found that the number of working-age adults with a major chronic condition has grown by 25 percent over the past 10 years, to a total of nearly 58 million in 2006. Chronic illness imposes significant costs on workers, employers, and the overall economy. This population accounts for three-quarters of all personal medical spending in the United States, and a Milken Institute study recently estimated that lost workdays and lower …

Place Mattters (Most): An Empirical Study Of Prosecutorial Decision-Making In Death-Eligible Cases, Katherine Y. Barnes, David L. Sloss, Stephen C. Thaman

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This article investigates prosecutorial discretion in death penalty prosecution in Missouri. Based upon an empirical analysis of all intentional-homicide cases from 1997-2001, this article concludes that Missouri law gives prosecutors unconstitutionally broad discretion in charging these cases. This article also finds that prosecutors exercise this broad discretion differently, leading to geographic and racial disparities in sentencing, and concludes with proposals for statutory reform.

A Review Of “How Judges Think” By Richard A Posner, Chad Flanders

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This is a short review of How Judges Think by Richard Posner.